Love Life! - A Horror Dating Sim

The demo (or, more accurately, prequel) to Love Life, REM Cycle, is still (rather appropriately) in development hell, but I still want to take this post to explain what exactly I mean by "horror dating sim."

First, what it isn't. Sure, there's an amount of "dating is scary because anxiety" and/or "fear of commitment/rejection" that might get explored through certain characters come the full release, but it isn't the focus of the game. The "horror" part and the "dating sim" part exist as two sides of a coin - part of the same whole, but not exactly intermingled. This is best explained as a day/night cycle.

During the day, you do daytime things. The setting is an all-girl cram school (if you're not familiar, think technical college with a dress code; post secondary education that still isn't quite a university), so these daytime things include attending class, befriending and/or flirting with the various love interests, and... Let's call it "managing your libido." I haven't quite decided on an exact day/night cycle yet because REM Cycle uses a different system, but right now, expect a typical morning/day/evening/night layout. In fewer words, the game in daytime is a dating sim with RPG elements.

At night, the world changes. The halls and classrooms become twisted reflections of their daytime counterparts, classmates are replaced by nightmares, and horrible abominations (that look eerily like your potential partners) roam the halls. You might need to find a key, fight for your life, run for somewhere safe, or face your fears and complete a specific goal in order to progress. To summarize, the game at night becomes a survival horror RPG.

The game's theme of duality still applies here, so there will still be things to do on either side in order to progress on the opposite side. For example, a love interest may refuse your advances until you do something about their night-time counterpart, and getting to know that love interest better as a friend might make that task easier by weakening the nightmare. Or it might make it worse, and doing something about the monster haunting you will cause their daytime counterpart close themselves off to you. Which applies to which will depend on the character, and will help each love interest feel unique, rather than having a couple dozen instances of the same relationship that requires the same grind over and over.

 

I also intend the game to have no "game over." Certain relationships may have a hard fail state (though this will be rare if it is included), and there will certainly be consequences and "soft" fail states, but you will never actually die. "Losing" during the day will penalize you somewhat, but there's nothing particularly deadly to encounter. The night, while full of potential death, is also a dream; dying there simply means halting your progress and waking up in a cold sweat.

Doing things this way (especially in RPG Maker) presents some interesting development challenges, which I think will make for some interesting gameplay once it gets to the full release. As far as REM Cycle goes, the main loop will focus on only two potential love interests and will have a more linear story, but will open up to the final intended sandbox style of dating sim by the end so you can experience things first hand (and will hopefully let you bring your REM Cycle save forward, too!).

Maids & Masters (& Loops Are Hard)

This post should be about Love Life! REM Cycle, but it turns out time loops are a bit of a challenge to write, and an even bigger challenge to program. I've been iterating on exactly how I want progression to work and I've made some progress, but it's not enough for me to really talk about.

So instead, let's talk about the December release for Maids & Masters. In between iterating on what exactly REM Cycle should be (trying to reconcile what I want it to be with what it needs to do to be interesting), I've been working on getting things set up for the next Freeze release. 

 

With 8 new Maids since the last Freeze update, and each of those new Maids needing new chat options with the Maids from last year as well as their own events and chat options for each other Maid, this Freeze update is going to be roughly 50% bigger than last year's. Thankfully these Freeze updates are fairly lighthearted, so I can just have fun letting these characters interact with each other in a way that isn't necessarily organic during normal gameplay.

Something that's a little less fortunate (for me, anyway) is how render-heavy these updates are. It's highly likely the game will officially break the 1GB mark in overall size with this update. I may look into some image compression to make this less of an issue, but hopefully it isn't as much of an issue as I think it is and I'll be able to barrel forward and focus on getting things complete.

Depending on time, I'll also be trying to get some of the 'semi-missable' trophies put into Big Dick's. I'm not sure how much time I'll have for that while also juggling my other projects and trying to get REM Cycle done, but it's on my mind.

Hard to believe there's only one week left before December gets here. Time really does fly, doesn't it?

Maids & Masters v0.8.1 Release

There's a longer changelog on this update than I expected there to be, but that's a good thing. It means there's that many fewer bugs to squash come time to port everything into MZ.

This build will be out to Patrons shortly after this post goes up, and available to purchase on itch.io and SpicyGaming within the next day or so.

For now, here's your changelog:

v0.8.1
Added the Trophy hint system.
Added the full version of Vendra’s childbirth event.
Added more books to the home Estate library, available after repairing the bookshelves.
Added nude wakeup scenes to Master’s bed - these are randomized and require 25+ affection.
Added an event for Quinn to react to the events of the second Haunt in the player Estate library.
Added an event to complete the side story of the Nithercott Estate to the Estate’s map.
Added first MC costume to the home Estate’s Master Bedroom wardrobes (requires Trophy 19).
Added nameplates to say which room belongs to which Maid post-remodel.
Added Katrina to the affection check-in and away rooms where the other Maids appear.
Added missing instances of Willow and Bianca to the away rooms where other Maids appear.
Fixed a bug that caused one of the Haunted Folk to crash the game if defeated repeatedly.
Fixed a bug that allowed walking on wall tiles in the home Estate ruins.
Fixed a bug where Trophy 20 would not display in the trophy room correctly.
Fixed a bug where the plaques for Trophy 17 and 19 wouldn’t display their text.
Fixed a bug where one of Odette’s renders wouldn’t erase properly during the repeat scene.
Fixed a bug that caused the customized exterior statues to momentarily change on interaction.
Fixed a bug where Katrina would take a Designer Dress but wear a Maid’s Dress.
Fixed a bug where canceling out of Teely’s greeting would cause the event to run again.
Updated the Augalamh Priestess’ dialogue so she doesn’t repeat herself after getting Trophy 11.
Updated the README spoiler-free walkthrough to include Baleflight Manor.
Updated the README to include the changelog for v0.8.
Updated the altar for Trophy 12 to make it more clear when the ritual is available to complete.
Updated Katrina’s introduction to include her first scene and sealing her Pact.
Updated Katrina’s Service option at the Estate to allow repeating her first scene.
Updated the explanation of the debug feature on the relevant trophy tablet.
Updated the Dark Mark’s Commune to have content for the new game phases.
Updated the bookshelves in the home Estate to use a new check type for Trophy 9.
Updated the Beauregard Estate to acknowledge the events of Ventire and the second Haunt.
Updated Quinn’s recruitment quest to acknowledge the events of the second Haunt.
Updated the “hidden answer” in Baleflight’s basement lab to provide the full answer.
Updated the Adhauga trader to respond to the completion of the Nithercott side story.
Updated the end of Viridius’ conversations so the player always sees the cult’s icon.
Updated the fast travel points for Adhauga to also recognize completing the Nithercott story.
Updated the interactions on objects in Melissa’s room so they no longer reference the ruins.
Updated the Controls section of the README to include basic controls.
Updated the “away” instances of Lalita, Kala, and Odette to include their available scenes.
Removed ‘saving after end of version’ message from the README as it shouldn’t be an issue.
Various minor dialogue and event updates.

Post #100 Special Announcement - Maids & Masters (& Act 2)

100 posts already. Man. I guess it isn't really that big of a deal, but it feels like a milestone. 

If you've been following Maids & Masters long enough (or if you've gone back through the thread on F95) you might've heard me say that MnM was made in VX Ace instead of a newer RPGM engine because it was all I had available. You might've also heard me say that MnM would get ported over to MZ once I had that engine available. Well, that engine has been available to me for a while now. It's what I've made the demos for Love/Loss and Redemption Harem in, and it's what Love Life! REM Cycle is being made in. So why isn't MnM in MZ yet? It's complicated. I'm not going to list out a bunch of excuses though. Instead, we're going to have a special announcement.

Act 2 of Maids & Masters will be in MZ.

This means a few things. Lots of new features, like the engine having native adjustable screen size, built-in text skip and mouse support, and the wider variety of plugin support from the RPG Maker community. It also means there's a lot of work for me to do in terms of resizing images, additional playtesting to assure the game functions without the plugins it currently uses, finding new plugins to replace the features that MnM will otherwise loose and adding new features (like re-bindable keys), and so on.

So, what will happen to MnM in VX Ace? v0.8.1 goes out to Patrons this Friday, that hasn't changed. v0.9 is still planned for December. After that is 2023, when I had originally announced work on Act 2 will begin. There's a few extra stipulations on that now.

The existing VX Ace version of MnM is still missing some parts. Most notably, the Love Shack and the additional 'missable' trophies being added to Big Dick's. Once those are put in place, there will be some additional testing and fixing, and then the VX Ace version will be released as Maids & Masters: Act 1. Once that is complete, I also want to bring Arrival up to snuff. Get rid of the placeholder assets, remaster it in MZ, and make the save able to transfer properly into the main game. Somewhere in this time frame, I also want to finish REM Cycle. After all of these things are complete and released, then work on Act 2 will begin in earnest. This means it may not be until a few months into 2023 that Act 2 actually starts releasing, rather than being available right away in January. This might change and Act 2 will be available sooner than I'm anticipating, but I can't guarantee that right now.

What this doesn't mean for MnM is a "sequel." The entirety of Act 1 will still be available in the MZ version. I'm taking steps to make sure existing players don't need to completely start over and will hopefully be able to use their saves in the MZ version of the game. I don't know yet if that will actually be possible, but I am trying. Failing that, I'll at least put in some kind of time skip, so if you've already played through Act 1 you won't need to play through again unless you want to.

As one last closing note - this wouldn't be possible if it weren't for my Patrons. It's taken me a while to get to this point, but I wouldn't be here at all without that support. If you want me to keep making upgrades like this - new engines, new assets, and more - I would greatly appreciate it if you considered supporting me.

Upcoming Demo: Love Life! REM Cycle's Setting and Themes

I think I'm as close to ready to start sharing this as I'm going to get (fun fact - I actually started working on this before L/L or RH), so here's the title for my third demo project:

 

Before I get any further - Love Life's protagonist is trans. She is female, but has yet to undergo bottom surgery. If you have strong negative feelings about this, I recommend you stop reading now. I'm making games, not political statements, but I will not tolerate bigotry.

 

First, REM Cycle is going to be different than the demos for Love/Loss and Redemption Harem in that it serves as a prequel rather than what is effectively the opening sequence. The main character (who can't be renamed in the demo, but will be re-nameable in the main game) starts REM Cycle and the main game in completely different mental states. REM Cycle won't be necessary to play, but does provide some extra context, serving as the catalyst for the way the MC acts in the main game.

The entire game will take place within an all-girl cram school's campus. The cram school is post-secondary education that isn't quite college (meaning that all of the characters are over 18, but there's a uniform policy) meant to provide its students with the skill and knowledge necessary to proceed with their education at their college of choice. The classes themselves will play a fairly small role in the story, but do have a gameplay purpose in raising your stats rather than your stats being raised through combat. The horror side of things will take place in a twisted version of the campus, with some places looking like a familiar (if less friendly) version of the original, and other places becoming alien, non-euclidean nightmares.

There's a theme of duality throughout Love Life. I called it a survival horror dating sim, but those are two separate pieces that affect each other rather than a single cohesive whole. During the day, you have classes, can talk with the other girls to try to either woo or seduce them, or find other activities to improve your stats. At night, there are monsters to hide from and the consequences of your actions are made manifest. This theme is intended to follow through the setting, the mechanics, the main character, even the title itself (being both what the game is about - the MC's love life - and a suggestion to love the life you have).

REM Cycle will be a little different from the main game, though these aspects should still come through. Rather than a hard and fast day/night cycle, REM Cycle will exist in a loop, placing you somewhere between the "reality" of the day and the "dream" of the night. You'll still have a pair of love interests to chase after, but first the MC will need to come to terms with a few things.

Lastly, I'm hoping to create REM Cycle in such a way that the save will properly carry over to the main game. My demos so far are rather ambiguous in this regard; Arrival can carry over to MnM, but it shouldn't or it causes bugs. Love/Loss might be able to carry forward, but there are a few things in place that might change and make that impossible. Redemption Harem is likely to undergo some pretty serious adjustments if/when it hits full release, so people who don't want to replay the start should be able to bring the save forward, but it might upset a few things. REM Cycle saves should work without issue in the main game. Hopefully.

Maids & Masters (& Finally Implementing Long Overdue Features)

Most of v0.8.1 will effectively be v0.8's post-game. If you've played through Baleflight Manor, you know that some of the actions you did or did not take during the earlier parts of the game finally have some consequences. These consequences are not singular, and there are things to do and acknowledge now that these consequences have come to pass. They aren't exactly world-shattering story upheavals, but there's a lot to give at least a little bit of attention to.

Most of that has now been completed, meaning v0.8.1 will soon be entering testing for release on November 18th. But not before I finally put in some long overdue features.

First, the trophy hint system. There was originally going to be an event leading up to unlocking it, but after about 30 hours of building, rendering, writing, rewriting, re-rendering, and rebuilding the whole thing, it just... Didn't work. So the hint system will be in place as of v0.8.1, but it will be missing some content. I'm probably much more upset than you are at this.

There's also new content for Quinn and the library that I've been meaning to put in place for the last several updates. Books that existed outside the home Estate are now in your library, new books have been written and added to your library, and Quinn has been updated to acknowledge her personal connection to the events that transpired in and around Clannestad.

Plus a bunch of smaller updates that you'll learn about when the change log goes up. Most of it isn't too big, but it's all stuff I should've had done a long time ago, and there's at least one new thing that's just a bit of fun that I wanted to include.

I hope you appreciate the extra attention to detail. It should also give you a bit more to explore and read for those of you that enjoy my world building.

Next week I should finally be ready to share some information regarding my next demo project, the survival horror dating sim hybrid.